The sixteenth‐century price rise: new evidence fromScotland, 1500–85

Abstract

This article contributes to the emerging belief among early modern economic historians that sixteenth‐century inflation was primarily caused by monetary factors. The Scottish case study reveals a strong relationship between coinage debasement and rising prices, a contention strengthened by the fact that the Scottish experience of inflation was high in European terms, and, in particular, stands at a considerable distance from the English pattern. This study includes the first scholarly examination of prices during the 1540s, and reveals that substantial inflation first emerged during this hitherto neglected decade. Prices plateaued during the 1550s, and rose consistently from 1560 to 1585. Meanwhile real wages declined during the 1540s and from 1560 onwards. This article is methodologically innovative in constructing two baskets of commodities, designed to represent the elite experience, alongside a more traditional basket based on a working household. These reveal the divergent experiences of the price rise within Scotland: rising prices hit the poor harder than the rich due to the high cost of domestic agricultural goods in the subsistence basket and the deflationary impact of wages and luxury goods upon the overall elite basket.

Climate and famines: a historical reassessment

“…Although arable cultivation (predominantly of oats and barley) has been an important feature of local economies in parts of the south-east and the eastern coast of late-medieval Scotland, elsewhere in the country it was pastoral husbandry and to a certain extent fisheries that supplied the vast majorities of kilocalories to the intake of the commoners. 93,128 Similarly, although potatoes were the single most important crop in the Scottish Highlands by c.1845, local populations were still able to supplement their food with fish, dairy products and oats. This is in a sharp contrast with many regions in western Ireland, which practiced potato monoculture.…”

Agricultural Prices in Scotland 1826–1974: County Level Data

“…The development and integration of markets has long been recognised as an important driver of economic growth in economies undergoing a process of industrialisation (Chilosi et al, 2013;Federico, 2011;Persson & Sharp, 2015). Empirical studies have frequently deployed regional grain price time-series data in analysing, for example, the evolution of national markets (Bateman, 2011;Gras, 1915), patterns of production1 (Olson & Harris, 1959) and the phenomenon of inflation (Blakeway, 2015;Gemmill & Mayhew, 1995). Work to refine and supplement existing datasets continues to extend the terrain over which researchers are able to operate, broadening the set of questions amenable to empirical analysis (Brunt & Cannon, 2013;Solar & Klovland, 2011).…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2015

“…Li examines the impact of information asymmetry on the movement of London–Antwerp exchange rates against the backdrop of England's ‘Great Debasement’ of 1544–51 and the revaluation of gold coins in the Habsburg Netherlands in 1539, concluding that early modern financial markets—or at least the London–Antwerp exchange markets—were much better integrated than is often thought, but this effective integration was hampered when information was slow and costly to acquire, as it was with English debasement. Debasement also features in an interesting contribution by Blakeway on sixteenth‐century price rises in the Scottish context, arguing that the Scottish Crown's continued meddling with debasement between 1560 and 1585 contributed to extremely high price rises north of the border. Whereas England witnessed a three‐fold increase in the price of a consumer basket, the figure was between six‐ and ten‐fold for Scotland.…”

“…Whereas England witnessed a three‐fold increase in the price of a consumer basket, the figure was between six‐ and ten‐fold for Scotland. Blakeway's article is also notable for producing and comparing an ‘elite’ basket of consumables with an ‘everyday’ one to show that the brunt of price rises was borne by Scotland's poorer subjects.…”